FLAME
by ShapeShiftersandFire
Summary: Born during the infamous Battle of Reach and raised on the Pillar of Autumn, Forerunner Cat descendant Flame finds herself thrust into the middle of a war raging for the better part of thirty years.
1. Prologue: Bombardment

I was born on a planet called Reach. I don't remember much of it, only the cave den my mother kept us in while we were young. I remember the sunlight that shown through the entrance each morning, I remember hearing the birds. I never saw them, though. Mom never let us out of the den. Sure, she went out, but she always came back with food for herself, which meant milk for us.

Our days passed slowly and were event-less. My oldest brother, Badger, ventured out as far as the den entrance before Mom caught him and carried him back in.

"You must never go out there," she scolded. "Any of you. The outside world is dangerous, it's not meant for kittens your age."

I understood her warning, but that only made me want to see beyond the den walls even more. I was a month old when I got my first glimpse of it.

When I turned five months old, something on Reach changed. The ground rumbled and shook, dirt fell onto our heads. The sky darkened and took on a green hue. We heard bangs that sounded like thunder, roars we didn't think were human, pops that sounded like breaking branches. We saw dirt explosions in the distance, and strange purple shapes float through the sky. Large, gray shapes went after them, sending out shots of light that hurt the purple shapes. My siblings and I didn't understand what was going on, but something told me Mom did.

I could tell something was seriously wrong when she came home one day. She was doing her best to keep her fur flat, but her eyes and scent betrayed her fear.

"Mom, what's going on?" My brother, Badger, shouldered his way through us to the front of the den. "What are all those shapes and noises? Is that supposed to happen?"

"No," Mom said, looking out of the entrance toward the explosions of blue and yellow light. "None of this is supposed to be happening." A massive explosion rocked the ground, making us stumble, and a huge purple shape plunged nose first into the dirt. We heard yelling from two different sides, one human, and another we couldn't figure out.

She turned to us, starting to take on a wild-eyed look. "We need to move. Now!" She herded us out of the den as fast as our short legs would allow her.

"Where are we going, Mom?" Wasp, my second oldest brother, asked.

She paused for a moment I didn't think any of us had to spare and looked around. Her ears pricked and her eyes widened as though she had just remembered something. "The ship-breaking yards…" I somehow heard her words over the explosions that rang out over the valley.

"The ship-breaking yards," she repeated, to us this time. "We must get to the ship-breaking yards."

"Where's that?" Wasp asked.

"Aszod," my mother said, ushering us forward. "If we leave now, we can get there in time. There's a small flying ship waiting for some important passengers. If we can get there before they get on, we can escape the planet with them. But we must hurry!" She scooped me up against my will by my scruff and bolted, my three siblings following as fast as they could. We ran towards the woods, a large shaded place with too many trees for me to count. But as we plunged into the undergrowth and the cover of the brush, an explosion went off close to us, too close for comfort.

We were thrown sideways, my mother losing her grip on me. I went skidding across the dirt and lay dazed for a moment before I was able to register what had happened. I felt nothing but fear, wondering if my family had been killed in the blast, and as I tried to stand and run, Mom's teeth closed around my scruff again. Badger and Wasp ran beside her, and the white blob on her back told me that my only sister, Lark, was riding on her back.

But the further we ran, the more explosions went off, and the more Wasp fell behind. I could sense that Mom was becoming desperate, struggling to keep us all together. She couldn't carry Wasp, and we were running out of time.

More and more dirt flew as we made our way at a painfully slow pace, all to allow Wasp to keep up with us. At this rate, we would never make it to safety.

We were thrown again as another explosion rocked the ground. Mom dropped me again, though Lark remained on her back. Badger and Wasp fell over themselves as they tumbled from the explosion site. It was hard to keep track of everything that was going on, between Mom's frantic yelling and the deafening blasts.

She tried to gather us together one more time, me in her teeth again. She started forward again, carefully, as another explosion went off more than a hundred paw steps from us. She jumped and turned, but I could sense she was lost. She was desperate, scared, and blinded from the dirt and debris. We were lost.

Then, as another blast sounded, a black shape galloped out of the dust. It was another cat, bigger than Mom. He had eyes as orange as the moon, coal black fur and stripes the color of the night sky. From the way he kept looking over his shoulder at the wrecked forest, I could tell he was scared.

"Allvin!" Mom dropped me at her paws to address the new cat. She pushed her face against his. "Thank goodness you're here!"

He only nodded, and quickly looked us over. "Are they yours?" He was asking about me and my siblings.

Mom nodded frantically. "Yes. Yes. I'm trying to get the ship yard. We need to leave."

Allvin nodded again, though he seemed to be hiding his surprise, as though he had no idea we even existed. "I'll help you." He hoisted Badger onto his back and took Wasp in his mouth.

Mom took me in her teeth again, and made sure Lark was still safe on her back. And then we were off, bolting through flying dirt and plants. Allvin's dark pelt made it easy to keep track of him as we went.

I didn't know how long we had been running; I only knew that we were desperate to get to our final destination. We heard pops ring out all around us when we entered opened ground. Voices we couldn't understand called out to each other, some smooth and steady and other rough and choppy. I didn't know where the voices were coming from until we rounded the corner of a decimated stone building. A group of straight-standing two legged figures were firing shots at a group of hunched over two legged figures. The hunched figures were covered in some kind of hard, shiny cover. The straighter figures were covered in something darker and wore round shells on their heads. I didn't know what they were, and I didn't want to stick around long enough to find out.

We quickly made our way past and away from the fight. There was no reason for us to stay.

The sky had turned as orange as Allvin's eyes when we finally arrived at what my mother called the Aszod ship-breaking yard. There was more fighting between the straight standing creatures and the hunched over ones. The straight-standing creatures were different than the last ones. This time, they wore colorful covering instead of the dark green covering. There were only two of them, one sitting at a massive gray tube that let out blinding bursts of light. Smoke from downed purple shapes burned my eyes and nose, but I didn't complain. My eyes and nose had been bothering me since we had left the den.

Mom and Allvin stopped. They dropped me and Wasp and surveyed the scene.

Allvin shook his head. "There's no Pelican, and there's too many enemies," he hissed. "We'll never get off this rock before it's gone."

"Don't say that, Allvin!" Mom scolded. "We'll make it. We just need to wait for the right time…" She crouched over me and stayed still while the fight continued below us.

Allvin sighed doubtfully, but crouched down over Wasp and remained silent.

We watched as the straight standing creature at the tube brought down two more purple shapes, and the one on the ground took down multiple hunch-backed creatures. It was strange to watch, two sets of unknown creatures fight for unknown reasons. I watched them carefully, taking in every step, every movement, every twist and turn of the ground fighters. There was something graceful about the way they danced around each other, however bloody it might have been. Something fascinated me in the way they moved, as though each one knew what the other was going to do. I wanted to know what that was like, to dance a fight, to move as quickly and easily as those creatures did.

Watching them made me forget the real issue at hand, and I was almost disappointed when the fight-dance was over. Mom jolted me up by my scruff, and as I watched a lean gray shape fly down to the ground, I realized that was our ticket to safety. Once we were on that ship, we would be okay.

"Allvin, what is _that_?" Badger pointed with his paw to something beyond the little gray ship. I followed his paw and felt my heart skip a beat or two. Beyond the little gray ship was an even _bigger_ ship, this one longer and thicker and covered in lights of yellow and red. There was something scrawled across the side of the ship in white, in thin white markings that meant nothing to my eyes.

"I don't know, son," Allvin said through a mouthful of Wasp's black and yellow fur. He looked just as mesmerized by the new ship as Badger and I were.

"We need to move," Mom interjected, bounding ahead of Allvin. "Quickly!"

I swung and bounced in Mom's grip, banging into her chest with every running step she took. She led us down to the platform and made a beeline for the little gray ship, only to stop frozen a few grown cat-lengths away.

"Oh no."

Standing at the back of the little ship were two of the straight-standing creatures: one with the colored armor and another, shorter one dressed in gray. They were blocking the entrance. There was no way to get in unseen.

Allvin slowed to a trot and stopped beside us. His black ears flattened against his head and his tail lashed. He didn't like the situation anymore than Mom did.

"Now what?"

Mom inhaled heavily. "I'll have to play nice."

"What?" Allvin hissed as Mom walked over to the two creatures, me still in her mouth and Lark still on her back. "Are you crazy? Get back here! You don't know what they'll do!"

Mom ignored him and kept walking. I could tell she was nervous from the way her breath came out against my fur and the way she walked. It was stiff, but she forced herself forward. She only stopped when she was a kitten-length from the humans. She dropped me at her paws and pushed me underneath her, same with Lark. Then she meowed.

The two creatures stopped making their noises. I couldn't tell what their reactions were from where I was underneath Mom, but I could hear the silence that held them.

Mom meowed again, this time turning her head back toward Allvin, Badger, and Wasp. She turned her head back to the creatures with another meow.

The one in gray, I could tell it was him because his voice was clearer than the other one, said something to her in his language—I could tell by his scent that he was male—and stepped aside. Mom chirped her thanks and used her tail to usher me and my sister forward underneath her. She didn't want to get us noticed.

The minute we were on the little gray ship she took me back in her mouth and cantered to the end corner. She dropped me there and let Lark out from underneath her. "Stay here and wait for your brothers." She turned and walked out into the isle far enough to watch for Allvin and our brothers.

It wasn't long before the black cat came in and handed off Badger and Wasp to Mom, who nosed them into the corner with me and Lark.

"Thank you, Allvin," she said, touching her cheek to his.

Allving returned the gesture. "I would have done that any time you asked." He pulled back, glanced at us and looked back at Mom. "I need to go now," he said. He sounded anxious.

"No, Allvin, please!" Mom begged. "Stay with us. You'll be safe."

"No." Allvin's eyes were still soft, but serious. "I can't do that. I need to make sure my own cats get off this rock in one piece. I'm sorry." He turned and dodged the tall creature in gray and jumped off the ship. He didn't leave right away, though. He turned and lingered for a moment, watching as the ship began to leave the platform.

Mom sighed. "Good-bye, Allvin."

Allvin blinked at her, his eyes regretful and his voice choked. "Good-bye, Reef."


	2. The Pillar of Autumn

The Pillar of Autumn

* * *

The ship we took refuge on was a "battle cruiser," Mom said, called the _Pillar of Autumn_. It was dozens of times larger than the little ship we had ridden in on, and it seemed to span for miles without end. My family hid out in the air ventilation system in an off-side passage where we were out of the main draft current. Mom had lined it with scraps of soft material she had collected during her daily outings to find us food scraps from what she called the "mess hall."

The vents were dim and dull. They were gray on all sides and in every passage. They twisted and turned in every direction; Mom had created a scent-path for us to follow so we didn't fall down an unexpected drop in the passages. She kept us away from the grates in the sides and bottoms for fear that we might be seen by unwanted "humans," as she called the strange straight-standing creatures. I thought it was ridiculous, since the older human in gray had already seen us when we boarded the little ship back in the yard. But Mom insisted that we stay out of sight, and so we did.

My siblings and I spent our days play-fighting and rough-housing in the dim passages of the air vents. I stayed away from a good number of these fake fights. I was the smallest in my litter, and usually the first one to get hurt. Badger was the biggest in the litter, and he used his size against the rest of us, so he didn't get as hurt.

Mom happily encouraged our play-fighting. I think she wanted to keep us busy while she was out scavenging so we didn't get into trouble. But her absences only gave me the chance to get a glimpse at the activity that was going on right under our paws.

The humans were strange creatures. I couldn't understand a word they said, and I couldn't wrap my head around their physical gestures. From what I could grasp, they bared their teeth when they were happy. I didn't understand. Cats only showed their teeth when they were irritated or angry. Why were they showing their teeth to each other if they weren't angry? It made no sense to me.

I noticed the more I watched them that they all responded in the same way to a man wearing gray. He was the same man we had encountered back on Reach in the ship yard; the one who let us onto the little ship Allvin had called a "Pelican." As far as I knew, this man was the oldest on the ship. I guessed that the rest maybe went to him for advice and guidance. He had all this strange little decorations stuck on his shirt and the other humans treated him with respect. He must be the leader, I decided, like Allvin. Allvin had said that he had his own group of cats to worry about. Maybe this man was the same way; he had his own humans to worry about like Allvin had his cats. I didn't think that was an unreasonable assumption, after all, the humans were living in a group. How could they not have someone to give them direction?

In a strange way the man reminded me of Allvin. He cared about his people, like Allvin cared about my family and his own group of cats. Even though I had only known Allvin for a short period of time, I felt like there was some fatherly feeling toward us from him. I got that same feeling from the ship's leader, though I didn't know him at all.

I thought it was funny that I could find some similarities between the humans and the few cats I knew. I wanted to tell Mom about it one night when she got back from raiding the scraps of the mess hall, but I knew she wouldn't like the idea. She was funny when it came to humans.

I didn't understand why she wouldn't just bring us down and let us live with the humans. After all, we were so close to them already I thought it just made sense. But Mom wanted nothing to do with them, and kept us holed up in the vents.

"The humans are dangerous," she said one night while we ate. "They can kill you instantly if they wanted to." We didn't know what "kill" meant, but it sounded bad.

Lark swiped her tongue around her mouth. "But why?"

Mom sighed and shook her head. "I don't know. Humans are strange creatures."

I said nothing, only continued eating. I doubted that. After all, I'd seen the way the human leader treated his men; I didn't think he'd let them hurt us, not even if they wanted to. But I let my mother and siblings be skeptical. Let them be afraid, I thought. It just gave me more of a reason to figure the humans out for myself.

I was still awake later that night, when the rest of my family had fallen asleep. My three older siblings were curled up in a heap, almost on top of each other. My mother was splayed out on her side, yet somehow managed to stay curled around the pile of soft stuff we slept on. I was fidgety, I wanted to get out and walk and explore the ship and the vents. I wanted to see what lay beyond our shallow lives of fear and secrecy. I wasn't afraid, not like Lark and Mom. Let them be cowards. It just showed who the brave cats were.

I stretched in my spot of the pile and settled down. No one stirred. I stretched again, this time getting to my paws, and hobbled out of the fabric pile. I sat at the edge of our hollow and looked around. The vents looked even darker than usual. They normally shine a bright gray, but with the lights off in the deck below, they shone a darker gray, like Badger's fur. In fact, I noticed that if I looked at the panels a certain way, they looked Badger's striped pelt, black and one thick white stripe down his back from his forehead.

I only snorted. I was tired of seeing the same old thing, even at night. I wanted to see something new. I stood up and took a few steps away from the hollow. I stopped and looked over my shoulder, just to make sure everyone was still asleep. Satisfied that they were, I took a right away from the hollow and headed off at a brisk pace to the furthest grate I could find.

It happened to be the first grate I found that was far enough away from the hollow. And, as a bonus, it just so happened to be right above the main deck of the ship. From where I sat, I could see the leader, carefully looking over a set of lines and shapes that meant nothing to me. Next to him, on a round solid object that looked like a rounded vent tunnel, was a smaller, odd-looking human I had seen only once or twice before. She—as far as I knew there were no other females on the ship, and the only females I did know were my sister and mother—was only about as tall as the tips of Mom's ears. She was a color I had no name for. She wasn't blue, like Badger's eyes, or red, like my fur. She was somewhere in between, but I didn't know that color. If I spoke Human, I'd ask her about her color, but my vocal cords were limited in the sounds I could make.

The oddest thing about her was that I could see the floor on the other side of her. It was like looking through a grate, only it was tinged that funny blue-red color. She came and went too, in a flash of blue light. One minute she was next to the leader, the next she was gone. Sometimes she came back, but most of the time she stayed away. I don't know where she went, but I wondered if she had a little vent hollow of her own that she stayed in when she wasn't with the leader.

I sat there watching as the leader talked to his see-through friend. He took this curved object out of his pocket and chewed on it. He did that a lot, and I wondered why. I didn't think he could eat it; it looked like the roots that had crawled into our den back on Reach. My family never ate the roots; Mom said they tasted bitter and they wouldn't help us fill our bellies. But he chewed on it anyway, whatever it was.

They made a lot of sounds I couldn't understand. The sounds almost sounded like cats noises, only they made no sense to my ears and I could hear them from where I sat. Still, I was happy to sit by the grate and listen to their funny noises. They were so much more interesting than my own kind.

I took my eyes off them for a moment and swept my eyes around the vent system that ran along the ceiling. I spotted an opened grate on the other side.

_Good_, I thought. I could get a better view of the leader and his friend. I stood and trotted through the gray maze to the open grate. If it hadn't been for the yellow light that streamed into the gray vents, I'm not sure I would have found it.

The opening gave me a better view of the main area, now that there weren't any bars in my way. I could see other humans sitting in cups at black fields with colored lines on them, like the ones the leader was looking at. I thought they might have been the same lines, but I couldn't be sure.

I heard the leader sigh. It was a tired sigh, like the ones Mom always made when she was fed up with my and my siblings' energy. I wondered if all the fighting had made him tired, after all, there had been a lot of that going on back on Reach. As far as I knew he hadn't been involved, but I couldn't say for sure.

I felt bad for him. Couldn't he just go home and leave all the fighting to everyone else? Maybe he had a family he had to get back to? Surely he must have wanted to be there instead of fighting those strange hunched creatures, right? I let out a sigh of my own and leaned forward a little to get a bit of a better look.

For a moment I thought I must have gotten a really good view, because the floor was becoming clearer and bigger. But then it sparked in my head that I had somehow tumbled off the edge of the grate, and I was falling to the floor in a ship infested with humans.

Reef jerked awake. Every night since she had first brought her family onto the cruiser she had had dreams of falling into endless darkness. She always woke feeling like she was only inches from the floor and it was only the waking world that caught her and set her down gently.

She took a deep breath to calm her nerves. _It was only a dream_, she reminded herself. _You were never falling. You never have fallen, not like that._ She took another breath and relaxed. Sometimes a little self-reassurance and a look around at your surroundings was all it took to calm down.

She rolled half way onto her stomach. She checked over the nest. Badger, Wasp, and Lark were sleeping a heap of gray, yellow, and white fur. She wished Flame would sleep in that bundle with them, but Reef's youngest kit always chose to sleep on the outskirts of it. Now, though, as Reef looked over her litter, she realized Flame was nowhere to be found.

Her heart thudded in her chest. _Where could my youngest have gone?_ She knew her kit was adventurous and bold, she could see it in Flame's eyes. A mother's intuition told her Flame had been watching the humans from the grate since the first day they arrived on the _Autumn_. She had always known in her heart, but she never bothered to address it. She felt panic rising in her stomach. She couldn't let Flame end up with the humans, she couldn't. She knew from experience what would happen once Flame formed a close bond, if at all.

Reef slowly stood, so as to not wake the rest of her litter. She took a sample of the air. Her kit's scent was fresh, but fading. She followed the trail to the edge of the hollow, and took a right, following Flame's scent. It grew strong at the first grate she came to. She was about to move on when she spotted a small group of humans standing around in a cramped circle. One of them, a human dressed in red and white, was kneeling on the ground. Reef strained to hear the conversation, but only caught snippets of it.

"…didn't see anything, Captain…"

"…where did she…"

"…thought I detected something in our systems…"

Reef bolted for the open grate on the other side. Flame's scent trail led all the way there and then ran cold. Reef crouched at the edge of the opening. A hairball of terror formed in her throat.

Her youngest kit was lying in a crumpled heap on the floor, surrounded by a posse of humans, including the Captain. Nothing on Flame looked broken, but the kit was unresponsive. The fall had knocked her unconscious. She was breathing.

Reef inhaled sharply. This couldn't be happening. She had promised herself she would keep her litter safe, keep the family together. How could she have let this happen? She should have watched Flame, she should have told her again and again to stay away from the grates, from the humans, not just once. Where had she gone wrong?

As the kneeling human removed his jacket and scooped Flame up, Reef knew there was nothing she could do to recover her daughter. Part of her wanted to leap down and fight for her kit, but the other part knew that only the humans could help Flame if she was injured. From there…Reef hated to imagine it.

"Lieutenant Miles, could you please take this kitten to the infirmary?" the Captain asked.

"Yes sir," the lieutenant, the one cradling Flame, answered.

The Captain nodded as the officer went off. He turned to the AI stationed at the pedestal behind him. "Cortana," he said, "I know there are far more pressing matters that need attention, but could you make sure this kitten recovers?"

"Of course, sir," Cortana said. "I'll take care of the kitten and the Covenant." She disappeared in a flash of blue light.

Reef backed away from the grate, shivering. She'd heard enough and there was nothing she could do.


	3. Unfamiliar Territory

**Unfamiliar Territory**

* * *

"She's stable, Captain…"

"No broken bones…"

"…lucky to be alive…"

"…just over five months…"

Everything hurt. My head throbbed, my shoulder ached. Even breathing sent sharp pains through my sides. Fixing my body position wasn't an option; my muscles screamed in protest. I felt like I'd been jumped on by Badger.

The room was blurry when I tried to open my eyes. I saw the misshapen forms of human faces above me, turned dark by the lights in the ceiling. When the humans pulled back, speaking in words I couldn't understand, the light shone fully. It hurt my eyes, and I looked away. Couldn't they turn them down a little?

As I blinked the room became clearer, and I could see three humans dressed in white coats. They stared down at me over the tops of the gray vent panels they held in their hands. I didn't understand why they were playing around with vent panels. What use could they have for them and what did they have to do with me?

_Mom was right_, I thought, blinking again. _Humans are strange creatures._

One of the humans lowered his panel and came closer to me. He extended his hand. I hissed at him. Just because they rescued me after my fall didn't mean they could touch me. He drew his hand back, not surprised, and looked at someone outside my line of vision.

"She's a wild one, Captain," the whitepelt, as I deemed him, said. "She must have come from one of those feral colonies on Reach."

I froze and stared up at the human. I had understood every word that came out of his mouth. That couldn't be right. I had never been able to understand human speech. I shouldn't be able to understand human speech! What had changed now?

_Maybe it was the fall_, I thought, staring instead at the wall. _Maybe it changed something in my head._ The thought didn't sound unreasonable. After all, I had hit the floor pretty hard. Maybe this was something that would go away in a few hours. I liked the sound of that, and decided to wait and see how I made out. In the mean time, I would take in every scrap of information I could get from the humans. Why waste time?

The Captain's voice brought me back to reality. "It doesn't surprise me, Doctor. Her mother was feral when I first saw her, and she's been hiding out in the ship ever since."

My heart thudded. The Captain had always known about us. What had Mom been fretting about, then?

"Her mother isn't feral, Captain." That was the voice of the strange blue-red human, my ears told me. I was sore, but not too sore to sit up halfway when she appeared on one of those stands near the table I was lying on.

"Did you know her mother, Cortana?"

Cortana nodded. "Quite well, actually. Reef was her name. She stopped in every so often to see Doctor Halsey. She always stayed a few hours, just talking to us. Then…she ran off one day and I hadn't seen her since." She smiled. "I was surprised when she turned up on the _Autumn_ after all this time away. Now I know why." She was looking at me, with an amused smile on her face.

"Can I help you?" I asked, disturbed at the new information I had on my own mother. She only laughed. It was obvious she didn't speak Cat.

"I think she's going to be as feisty as her mother," Cortana said. She leaned forward. "What should we call her, Captain?"

"Cortana, she isn't staying with us."

"Oh, but we need to call her _something_ until she gets better, don't we? Or do you expect us to call her 'Cat' all day?"

I held back a purr. This "Cortana" had an odd sense of humor, but I liked it.

My ear swiveled around as the Captain sighed. "All right, pick a name. We'll figure out what to do with her once she's recovered."

"Thank you, Captain."

The Captain didn't say anything, and I couldn't see him from my point of view. But I watched him leave the room without another word.

Cortana turned her attention back to me. "All right, little one," she said in a gentle voice. "What are we going to call you?"

"Flame," I tried telling her. "My name is Flame."

She sighed. "It's a shame there isn't translation software for cats. Maybe then I'd be able to understand what you're trying to tell me." So she understood I was trying to talk to her. It wasn't much, but at least we were getting somewhere.

"_Flame_," I tried telling Cortana again, but it was useless. She couldn't understand me. But for whatever reason, she was staring at me like I'd grown another set of eyes.

"I've heard of dogs that could _almost_ talk," one of the medics said, "but I don't think I've ever heard of a _cat _that could do it."

I stared blankly at him. What was he talking about? I hadn't "almost" forced my voice into human speech. Had I? I shook my head. This day was getting weirder as the hours went by.

"I don't think she's any ordinary kitten," Cortana mused. "Try again."

"Flame." I felt nothing but the usual vibrations of my feline vocal cords. Nothing out of the ordinary. _Stop staring at me._

"Hmm," Cortana said. "Interesting." Her blue eyes shone thoughtfully. "What should I call you, then? Little Red?"

I hissed my displeasure.

"All right, all right." Cortana held her hands up. I didn't know what that meant. Maybe she was trying to calm me down? "What about Stripes?"

"Stripes?" I repeated. "Is that the best you can come up with?" There was no doubt in my mind that she had been made by humans. She wasn't very creative with this naming thing.

"We could call her Rocket," one of the younger medics suggested.

Rocket? What on Reach was wrong with these people?

"What about Autumn?" The suggestion came from the only female medic in the room. "She may have been born on Reach, but the _Autumn_ is her home now."

"Autumn," Cortana repeated. "I like it." She smiled at me. "Autumn it is."

So I was known as Autumn among the medics in what I learned was the "infirmary." It was different that the deck I had fallen on to. This deck was longer and wider, and there were two straight rows of white nests on either side. The humans called these "beds," and I was the only occupant in the place. I guess the other humans didn't need to recover from anything.

The human that had picked me up off the floor, as I found out later, came to see me every now and then. He seemed pleased that I was getting better every day he saw me. That was true. I wasn't as sore and my head was a lot clearer. I had already started walking around the bed, and by the third day I was running to the edge and back. The lead medic wouldn't let me down on the floor. I guess he wasn't sure I was ready for that yet.

Cortana and the Captain, whose full name was Captain Keyes, came to see me every so often, too. I think Cortana found me amusing. She watched me so closely I could feel her gaze burning into my fur. Captain Keyes mostly came to check up on me. He was starting to warm up to me a little, and that made me happy. I liked him. I liked them both.

The only being that hadn't crossed my mind in almost two days was Mom. There was a grate in the infirmary, but whenever I looked I never saw her there. I wondered if she watched me while I slept, or if she even came by at all. She hadn't come to get me after I fell and she hadn't come to see me the second night when the medics left me alone for a little while. Sometimes I wondered if she was angry with me for going too close to the grate. Other times I wondered if she was disappointed in me for having disobeyed her. Most times I wondered if she was just scared to get too close to the humans.

I suppose I could understand that, but at the same time I didn't know what she was so worried about. The humans hadn't hurt me at all so far. In fact, they had been nothing but kind to me. Whatever Mom had been worrying herself out of her fur about was beyond me.

On the night before my third day on deck I caught Mom's scent in the room from the vent. It was the first time in three days I had smelled her. I looked up toward the vent and saw her green eyes glittering from behind the grate.

"Mom."

Her eyes dimmed and lit as she nosed opened the grate. She jumped down from the opening with a grace I envied. She was a long, slim cat; she was tall and narrow. She wasn't sickly thin; it was just her body type. Her brown and cream pelt looked rougher than it normally was. I knew I had been gone a couple days, but I had always known Mom's fur to be smooth and well groomed. Now her pelt was messy and under-groomed.

"Flame." There was something about her voice that unsettled me. I caught a sour smell in the air from Mom's breath. She sounded relieved, upset, and defeated all in one word. "How are you feeling?"

"Much better," I said. "The medic says I'll be okay in another day or two. I can't wait to get out of here." I looked around the room to emphasize my point.

Mom chuckled. "The medic says," she repeated ominously as she leaped up onto the bed. "The medic says. Does he now?"

The fur along my spine stood up. The first thought to run through my mind was the consideration that Mom might be going mad. I nodded. "After the fall, I can understand everything the humans say," I told her. "They can't understand me, though. It gets annoying. Do you know they call me Autumn?"

Mom froze from the tips of her whiskers to the tip of her tail. "Ohhh…" She turned her head away from me and muttered something I couldn't hear. When she turned back to me, her eyes were worried. "You can understand them, then?"

I nodded slowly. Her tail tip twitched. She was silent for what seemed like a life time.

Finally, she sat down. "Flame," she said, "have I ever told you of our heritage?"

"No," I said. I bit back the words _You don't tell us much of anything._ I didn't want to upset her any more that she already was.

She wrapped her tail neatly over her paws. "You come from a long line of powerful cats, Flame," she said. "What you're experiencing, your ability to understand the humans, comes from your ancestors. It's not going away, Flame," she added. My stomach plummeted. I was getting used to understanding the humans, but at the same time I kept wondering when it was going to go away. So far it hadn't, and it had been two days.

"Ever?"

"Ever. I wasn't able to understand the humans until I was one year old. I suppose your fall activated it early." She licked the top of my head. The sour smell that wafted off her pelt made me want to pull away. "You have great power in you, Flame. You just don't know it yet." She hopped off the bed and in one graceful, powerful leap went back to the vent.

I watched her nose the vent into place and walk away. When she had gone I rolled over, shaking her mysterious words off. _My mom's going crazy_, I thought. _My mom's going absolutely crazy. _

Reef staggered as she made her way back to her nest. She stopped and leaned against the wall. A wave of nausea swept over her. Pain gripped her belly. She cringed.

_It's only a belly ache_, she told herself. _I'll be fine in the morning_. But she couldn't help but wonder if it was the Sickness. She had been warned that it would come after her when she denounced her power, but she hadn't believed it. She wondered if now it was coming to get her, if this was her punishment for letting her kit stray.

A sharp pain made her buckle and drop. _Oh, Plain of Fallen Warriors, where did I go wrong?_ She let the pain subside before she tried to stand again and hobble back to her nest.

_Only a belly ache, _she thought again. _Only a belly ache._


End file.
